Newsletter

Flannery O'Connor home has stop along literary trail

Flannery O'Connor childhood home among stops on trail that links writers who defined literature of the South

Mary Ann Anderson

Andalusia Farm, the bucolic home of Flannery O'Connor, is located on Highway 441 (the Eatonton Highway) just north of Milledgeville. She lived and wrote here until her death from lupus in 1964. (Mary Ann Anderson/MCT)

HANDOUT

Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone with the Wind," lived in the Crescent Apartments in downtown Atlanta while she wrote the most famous and well-loved novel about the South. (Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development/MCT)

Joel Chandler Harris

Anonymous

Erskine Caldwell, the top-selling American author whose earthy stories have gained him world fame, is pictured in his London hotel during a brief visit here in October 1962. Caldwell began his writing career as a reporter, graduated to Hollywood as a screen writer, then went to Russia as a newspaper and radio correspondent. He penned his first novel in 1929 and has written more than 30 others since then. Among his most famous books are "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre". (AP-PHOTO/str)

Flannery O'Connor

Carson McCullers

Lillian E. Smith

ATLANTA - Standing in the front yard of the Wren's Nest in Atlanta's West End neighborhood and admiring the stunning Queen Anne Victorian home, I was about to embark on a literary journey across Georgia.

The Wren's Nest, once the home of Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus Tales, is only one of the stops along Georgia's literary trail marking the homes or birthplaces of the state's best-known and loved authors.

The Georgia portion is but one of the triumvirates, including those in Alabama and Mississippi, that are strung along the Southern Literary Trail (www.SouthernLiteraryTrail.org).

The trail links together writers whose impact defined the literature of the South.

The yard at the Wren's Nest, crammed with dogwoods, azaleas, and wisteria, wraps itself around the Reconstruction era-home that Harris lived in from 1881 and until 1908.

I love how it came to have such a wonderful name: a family of wrens built a nest in the mailbox, and no one in the family could bear to disturb it. A second mailbox was added so that the birds could be saved.

A collection of stuffed animals including B'rer Fox, B'rer Bear, and B'rer Rabbit now share part of the circa-1870 home where Harris recorded the Uncle Remus stories in the dialect of the African slaves.

Cocooned by the towering skyscrapers of Atlanta, the cherished landmark of the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum is Georgia history personified.

Mitchell lived here with her husband, John Marsh, while she penned "Gone with the Wind,'' without a shadow of a doubt the most famous novel ever written about the South.

Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operated by the Atlanta History Center, the Tudor Revival house was built in 1899 as a single family home and was later renovated into rental units known as the Crescent Apartments.

Less than an hour's drive southwest from Atlanta is the tiny hamlet of Moreland and the Erskine Caldwell Birthplace and Museum.

Caldwell, the author of "God's Little Acre" and "Tobacco Road," wrote 25 novels, 150 short stories and 12 works of nonfiction.

He often portrayed rural poverty in Georgia with characters that seem impossibly absurd even by today's standards, but still his books sold at least 80 million copies, with three of them made into movies.

The circa-1879 home, a simple wooden house on a grassy lot, has undergone extensive renovations but is now open to the public. Hours are by appointment only.

Andalusia Farm, the bucolic home of Flannery O'Connor, is located on Highway 441 (the Eatonton Highway) just north of Milledgeville. She lived and wrote here until her death from lupus in 1964. Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple," was born in Eatonton near Milledgeville at a place called Ward's Chapel.

The Flannery O'Connor Room is located at the Georgia College and State University Museum in Milledgeville. 478- 445-4391.

The Lillian E. Smith Center for the Creative Arts in Clayton is an artists' retreat at the Laurel Falls Camp for Girls. It is a place of quiet refuge in the Blue Ridge Mountains that honors the author of "Killers of the Dream" and "Strange Fruit." "Strange Fruit," focused on a biracial love affair, was so controversial that at one point the U.S. Postal Service refused to ship copies.

Savannah's stopThe Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home is located at 207 E. Charlton St. The family lived in the home from 1925-1938, and it has been restored to look as it would have during that time.Hours: 1 p.m.-4 p.m. daily except ThursdayAdmission: $5 for adults, free for childrenInformation: 912-233-6014 or flanneryoconnorhome.org

Along the trailIn addition to the sites in Georgia, the Southern Literary Trail incorporates writers and sites in Alabama and Mississippi.Alabama-- Lillian Hellman in Demopolis-- William Bradford Huie in Hartselle-- Truman Capote and Harper Lee in Monroeville-- Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Montgomery-- Eugene Walter, William March and Albert Murray in Mobile-- Murray and Ralph Ellison in TuskegeeMississippi-- Tennessee Williams in Clarksdale and Columbus-- Walker Percy and Shelby Foote in Greenville-- Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander and Richard Wright in Jackson-- Wright in Natchez-- William Faulkner in Oxford